


Small Beginnings

by orphan_account



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Character Study, Domestic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:06:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: They didn't think it would end up like this (but that isn't a bad thing.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minarchy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minarchy/gifts).



> Mentions Sam briefly and is set partially after the events of Uncharted 4. Mostly gen (with some Nate/Elena cause canon) but I tried to leave it open to interpretation to being shippy? I hope you like it!

Sully never thought he would make it this far, not with the way he lived. It had never been much of a concern though – he would live as long as he lived, and if it was the smoking or the smuggling that got him – well, he died as he lived. 

That was just how he lived, because, well, he was only living for himself, so who cared? He would only do what he liked, only live for himself, and only die for himself too. 

The next thing he knew, though, he had Nathan Fucking Drake under his wing, and that kid would throw a fit if he died. It was funny how the older you got, the quicker time went. One minute you were teaching a kid how to pickpocket better, the next thing you knew that kid was a goddamned real adult, scaling walls and stealing priceless artifacts. 

And at some point you had to realize that maybe you weren’t the only person in your life who mattered anymore. 

Maybe living for other people wasn’t so bad.

Not that he had gone soft or anything – Victor Sullivan didn’t go soft. He had lived this way for decades, and there was only so much an old dog could change his spots, or whatever that saying was. 

But it was a funny thing, caring for other people.

It had only gotten worse when Elena had showed up in both their lives. He liked Elena, a far too enthusiastic journalist, smart as whip but stupidly fearless. 

Nate liked her too – even though she was objectively too good for him. 

And that had really just cemented everything. Sully may not be able to change, but he knew Nathan had to. Nathan couldn’t keep getting shot at and almost falling off buildings his whole life. 

That wasn’t what he wanted for Nathan – and he knew it wasn’t what the kid wanted. He knew that he wanted a family. Sully, he had never wanted that. Why would he want a family when he had his plane?

He got one though. 

That’s what he thought when he visited Nathan and Elena’s knew home for the first time, when Nathan, who wasn’t really a kid anymore, threw his arms around him in excitement, eager to show Sully their “real house, that we rent like adults! Can you believe it? I’ve never signed a lease in my goddamned life but now-“

And Elena smiled and said, “I’m glad you could come,” and Sully felt like, well, maybe he could stay with them a little, like they offered, between smuggling jobs. Maybe it wasn’t just what Nathan wanted. Maybe he wanted it too.

Maybe change wasn’t so bad.

* * *

Elena didn’t think her life would end up like this – though she wasn’t sure which part she was more surprised by. She wasn’t sure if she should be surprised by its normality, or its abnormality.

When she was a little kid, she wanted to be Batman, then Spider-man, then Indiana Jones. She had been an indecisive child. 

Then when she was 12 she read a story about Nelly Bly, going undercover in an asylum to expose its abuse, and she decided she wanted to be an investigative journalist. That is what she would be, she thought.

Of course, nothing was ever that simple. 

She supposed it was the indecisiveness thing again – because she supposed most investigative journalists didn’t go on reality shows when they graduated – but she had, ink on her degree from the University of Florida barely even dry when she sent in her audition tape to Withstand! – a short lived survival based reality show that she had done surprisingly well on. 

She supposed she never really stopped wanting to be Indiana Jones.

Still, even on her stint on Withstand!, building shelters our of brush and climbing trees to keep her limited food away from animals – she would never have predicted how her life would end up. 

She never would have predicted Nate and Sully – never predicted how it would start, with that phone call about Francis Drake’s goddamned tomb.

And it was – it was a lot sometimes. Almost too much, but Elena was a lot too. Even as she got older, and didn’t always want to be dealing with gun-wielding mercenaries every six months – there was still that thing inside of her. The thing that made her want to be Indiana Jones and Nelly Bly and everything in between. 

And, she would think sometimes, even when they were all just sitting around in the living room, eating take out or drinking beers – that Nate and Sully understood her better than anyone ever had. She had never had a huge amount of angst about being misunderstood or anything - but she had always been restless.

When she was with Nate and Sully, she didn’t feel that way. 

And that was the strange part. As strange as lost cities or ancient artifacts – it was strange how normal it all was. 

It felt normal when she was playing video games on the couch with Nate and it felt normal when Sully helped her with the dishes and it felt normal when they went out into the middle of a jungle to crawl through looking for some old artifact.

It felt normal. All of it, the treasure hunting, the domesticity – it was normal.

That was the strangest part.

* * *

Nathan didn’t think he would have so many people that cared about him – really cared about him. When he was young he had always thought it would just be Sam, only Sam. 

“Me and you only have each other,” he would say to him after they ran away, changed their names, changed their lives - and Nate believed him. “Just us, just family.”

But Nathan wasn’t 13 anymore, and his big brother wasn’t the coolest guy in the world anymore – and more importantly, he could be wrong. 

He had people that cared about him – two people. 

And he cared about them more than anything. It had maybe taken him a bit to realize that (something he still felt guilty for, in the middle of the night, when he would remember the grief he had put everyone through in Libertalia), but he knew now. 

He had always thought he needed more. More more more. More adventure, more thrills, more everything. 

“Kid,” Sully had said to him once. “You act like you know everything but you don’t know shit.”

He was right, probably, but Nathan was beginning to think he was figuring it all out. Figuring out how to let people care about you without running away. Figuring out what he really needed. 

It had been easier with Sully – who knew what he was like, and knew how to keep him from running. When he looked back on it though, maybe Sully had always cared for him that deeply. Maybe he had just never said it but maybe, even when it had just been the two of them, when Nathan still choked on the word “family” because it reminded him of a prison courtyard and sometimes he would just leave, not calling Sully for months at a time, maybe… 

But when Elena came around, it all began to fall into place. It wasn’t easy, but it all began to make sense. Elena pushed him in the best way, and Sully liked her two, smiling at the both of them – “You two have a funny idea of romantic.” 

Now, Sully would stay with them sometimes, when he wasn’t working, and sometimes, when he was sitting on the couch, telling Elena stories about him, her laughing, the corners of her eyes crinkling, he would just look at them and think – 

It all made sense. He cared for them, and they cared for him. 

That was all he needed.


End file.
